{"id":201204,"date":"2025-12-25T11:56:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T11:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/201204\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T11:56:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T11:56:10","slug":"merger-will-drive-down-petrol-prices-companies-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/201204\/","title":{"rendered":"Merger will drive down petrol prices, companies say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">By\u00a0Kate Green\u00a0of RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fuel companies NPD and Gull have announced plans to merge national operations.<\/p>\n<p>While still subject to Commerce Commission approval, the move would combine NPD and Gull sites, teams and supply chains to form the largest independent, majority Kiwi-owned fuel company.<\/p>\n<p>Each of their combined 240 sites would maintain it&#8217;s distinctive brand &#8211; Gull sites are most common in the North Island, and NPD in the South, the companies said in a statement released on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n<p>The South Island-based Sheridan family would own fifty percent, with Barry Sheridan, the current NPD owner and chief executive, to become the head of the new company.<\/p>\n<p>Australasian private equity firm Allegro Funds, which owns Gull, would hold the other half.<\/p>\n<p>The companies said the move should drive down pump prices, with Sheridan saying both companies were focused on making it easy for customers to pay less.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;NPD started doing so more than 55 years ago and Gull started shaking up the market 25 years ago,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Together, we&#8217;ll do even more, so motorists pay less.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The companies had a combined staff of 130, and a combined buying power of one billion litres of fuel a year.<\/p>\n<p>Gull chief executive Dan Gilbert said: &#8220;Joining forces means we&#8217;ll be everywhere, accelerating what we can do for more customers in more places.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Duplicating systems and sharing services would help the new company continue to deliver market leading competitive pricing to motorists, the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>The parties said they had already engaged with the Commerce Commission, and an application for clearance would be registered in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0Kate Green\u00a0of RNZ Fuel companies NPD and Gull have announced plans to merge national operations. While still subject&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-201204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}